April 1st, 2011
What do you think about this article?
http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/bp-spills-personal-data-of-13000-oil-leak-victims-25266
Apparently, a BP employee somehow seemed to misplace their laptop while on a business trip. As we all well know, losing a laptop or personal device is a very common occurrence that unfortunately can cause a lot of pain and aggravation. The Ponemon Institute has reported that more than 10,000 laptops go missing at the 36 largest US airports each week with an addition 2000 being lost at medium sized airports. Adding this incident on top of the recent oil spill in the Gulf, I have to imagine that somone at BP is not having a good day.
The particular item in this article that caught my attention however, was the fact that some very sensitive data was being saved on this laptop - including the names and private information of 13,000 people who filed for compensation after the Gulf of Mexico spill. Unusual? Not really. Last year alone, datalossdb.org reported that close to 2 million records were lost on “stolen” laptops. This is a staggering and troubling statistic that should give us cause for concern about the type of data being stored on our end point devices. Aggravation leads to business costs when fines, penalties and compliance notifications come into play with mandatory consumer notification. Ouch!
With a ten year background in security, this is one of the reasons why I love virtual desktops – and especially desktops as a service who place so much emphasis on confidentiality, integrity and availability. A lost device is nothing more than a lost device to be replaced. The OS, applications and data are all safely locked away in a secured data center with controlled access. No more press articles about spilling personal data.
